Walls covered in photos of graffiti-covered subway cars

Me, standing in front of a subway-car sized model

This week, Mason and I decided we’d like to go on a field trip to a museum we’d never been to before. At Abby’s suggestion, we decided to go check out the Bronx Museum of Art, where there’s currently an exhibition on NYC subway graffiti in the late 70’s and early 80’s.

Mason decided to meet me there and so Hugo and I set out from ALC-NYC by ourselves. We got extremely train lucky taking the 6 to the 4 and were there in no time at all - the museum is basically due north of where we are. The Bronx Museum is also FREE, which is my favorite price for a museum (they accept donations and also sell some pretty cool swag, which I did not buy but am still thinking about). Mason met us there right after, and we headed into the exhibit.

It’s really well set up - first you come into a room with an old subway map plastered on one wall and a timeline of that era in NYC on the other, where a news clip about the photographer who documented the work, Henry Chalfant, is playing on a loop. He’s a white guy and a transplant, not at all who you would expect to be the official-unofficial documentarian of this part of NYC’s counterculture, but apparently, over the years, as he gathered and printed photographs of art that was, by nature, ephemeral and began to compile it into an archive, his studio became a neutral gathering places for all of the various crews to come and study, get inspiration, develop their styles.

At the time the MTA was a mess, the cars rusty and falling apart. The artists who did the work did so at their own risk (graffiti was, and still is, illegal on the subway), working quickly and stealthily to tag cars. Sometimes the work would only be up for hours or days before it was scrubbed by the MTA or covered up by a rival crew. The transience is inherent in the form, and the writers (not artists, as I’d assumed they identified…) prolific.

And the art itself is incredible - the clean lines of the lettering, the colors, the boldness of the forms. There were about 90 prints in the first room, arrayed in rows across an entire gallery wall, as well as pages and pages of sketchbooks where writers worked out their designs (honestly SO COOL, maybe my favorite part). There was also a recreation of Chalfant’s studio and another 2 walls of street photography - writers at work, but also breakdancers and mattress-jumpers and kids in custom-decorated pants and gathered around fire hydrants and posing on stoops. Then in the next room, there were several life-sized model cars and a video on loop with more photos of subway cars - 500 in all!! - with such accurate subway sounds playing that it took my brain a minute to register that no, I couldn’t hear the subway from this gallery, it’s part of the exhibit.

We spent a great hour there, examining everything, before deciding we were done and heading back. All in all, a great museum experience (we were basically the only people there except for some tinies on a class trip) and a fascinating exhibit - it’s up until March and I highly recommend it!